SEO
Squarespace Announces Video Hosting And Monetization
Squarespace announced an expansion of their Member Areas monetization platform that now allows publishers to host and monetize video content. The new capabilities makes it easy for publishers to sell access to video content and build a new revenue stream.
Screenshot of Squarespace Video Hosting Admin Panel
Squarespace Video Monetization Platform
Squarespace is a website building platform that helps publishers build online stores, an online presence for a local store or to simply create a blog.
In response to rapidly changing trends Squarespace rolled out a program called Member Areas that allowed publishers to earn money selling instructional and other kinds of content online through private members-only sections of their Squarespace website.
The goals of the Member Areas are:
“Engage your audience with exclusive content.
From virtual classes and workshops to newsletters, podcasts, and video series, Member Areas help you build, harness, and monetize the power of your online community”
Squarespace announced today that they are now fully video capable and that publishers can now fully host videos on Squarespace and sell access to them via the platform.
Squarespace handles all of the infrastructure for hosting the videos and for collecting the fees. Publishers can choose to charge a one-time fee or a recurring fee.
According to Squarespace:
“Sell access to video content: With Member Areas, customers can choose to charge a one-time or recurring fee to access their video content.
Host video directly on Squarespace: Squarespace is now supporting native video hosting on our platform, in addition to externally hosted videos on YouTube and Vimeo.
Video hosting storage: All customers will be able to upload up to 30 minutes of high-resolution video content to their website for free.
Leverage our new video player: All Squarespace hosted videos will be played on our new video player with slick playback, speed controls, resolution controls, and a deep integration into the Squarespace platform.
Customize video details: Titles, descriptions, URLs, custom thumbnails, metadata, and more can be fully customized.
Merchandise video content: Videos can easily be categorized, arranged, and styled to best represent a customer’s brand.”
Squarespace Makes it Easier to Earn Income
The new video platform allows publishers to sell access to recorded member-only video content. This provides local businesses and entrepreneurs an opportunity to provide services like online classes to a wider audience, giving businesses and individuals a new way to earn income.
The new video platform is available as part of the Member Areas add-on service with plans that start as low as $9/month.
Citations
Video Hosting and Monetization Announcement
Introducing: Video Hosting and Monetization Tools
Read About Squarespace Member Areas
SEO
8 Free SEO Reporting Tools
There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?
In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.
Price: Free
Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.
Most common reporting use case
GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.
As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:
- Total Impressions
- Average CTR
- Average Position
Tip
But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.
If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.
Price: Free
Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.
Most common reporting use case
Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.
Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.
Such as:
- Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
- Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
- Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
- Social media platforms – Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter
- Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage
Sidenote.
If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks
Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:
With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.
Favorite feature
The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.
Price: Free for 500 URLs
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.
Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.
Most common reporting use case
When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.
Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.
Favorite feature
Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs.
If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.
Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.
Price: Free
Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.
For example, you could use our:
Most common reporting use case
One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.
With AWT, you can:
- Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
- See the performance of your website
- Check all known backlinks for your website
Favorite feature
Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.
If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).
Price: Free
Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.
Most common reporting use case
For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.
With the free version, you get the following features:
- On-page SEO report
- Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
- Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
- SERP positions
- Country changer for SERP
The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.
If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.
Favorite feature
The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.
Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.
Price: Free
Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.
Most common reporting use case
GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.
Favorite feature
You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.
Price: Free
Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.
Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.
Most common reporting use cases
The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.
This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.
Price: Free
Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.
Most common reporting use cases
Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.
Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.
Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.
Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.
Favorite feature
Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.
Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.
You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.
Final thoughts
These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.
The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.
Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂
SEO
Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO
A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.
These findings include:
- When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
- 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
- Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.
Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.
As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.
High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects
The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.
The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.
The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.
This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.
The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.
Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results
With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.
When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.
Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.
New Competition From Unexpected Sources
The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.
On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.
An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.
Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search
The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.
Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:
“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”
Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.
Methodology & Limitations
To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.
The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.
While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.
Why We Care
The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.
Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.
SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.
As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.
How This Could Help You
While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.
Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:
- As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
- Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
- Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
- Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
- Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.
Looking Ahead
While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.
By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
SEO
Automated SEO Reporting (The Easy Way)
If you’ve dabbled in SEO reporting, you’ll know that manual reporting becomes more painful the more you have to do. So, how can you take the weight off your shoulders? By automating the repetitive bits.
In this article, I’ll share how you can automate your SEO reporting easily using just two tools: Ahrefs and Google Looker Studio (GLS).
In theory, automating SEO reporting should help:
- Free up time
- Improve efficiency
- Improve consistency
- Reduce costs
But, in reality, these types of projects can get complicated quickly—often taking longer than expected—if finished at all.
So, rather than trying to automate all the things, let’s keep it simple and focus on what we can automate easily:
- Organic traffic reporting
- Keyword rank tracking
- Website auditing
- Competitor analysis
- Website changes
- Brand mentions
The two most popular data sources for SEO reporting are Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA). So, how can we automate these two reports?
Here’s what we’ll do:
- Connect data sources to Google Looker Studio – GSC and GA
- Design a report – we’ll cheat using a template
- Schedule it to be delivered in our email box
Plot spoiler: We’ll use these two Google Looker Studio templates:
Automating Google Search Console reporting
To start, make sure you’re logged into Google Search Console. Then, head to Looker Studio and click on the Search Console Report.
Then click on Use my own data and Replace data.
Then, select your site from the list.
Then select either Site Impression and web or URL Impression and web, depending on your preference. I am using URL Impression and web in this example.
Sidenote.
Site Impression and URL impression support different search types. For full details and differences, check Google’s documentation here.
Click Add at the bottom right-hand corner. You’ll then probably get a pop-up—click Add to report.
Once that’s added, you should get something that looks like this but with your website’s data showing.
Now you’ve got your report, let’s schedule it. To do so, click on the downward-facing caret in the top right and click Schedule delivery.
Add the people you want to receive the report and pick a start time and time for the report to be sent. Then click Save.
Once you’ve completed these steps, you’ll get a PDF report automatically sent to those email inboxes on the date you specified.
Automating Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reporting
Automating GA4 reporting uses a similar process. To start, head back to the main Looker Studio dashboard and set up a new GA4 report by clicking on the GA4 Report icon.
Then, click on Use my own data and select your GA4 account.
Then select your site from the drop-down list and click Add.
Your site’s information will then be populated in the copy of the GA4 template.
Once you’ve done that, you can automate the sending like we did with the GSC report.
- Go to Share and click the downward facing caret
- Click Schedule delivery
- Add the people you want to send the report to and select a frequency to deliver the report.
Now, we’ve seen how easy it is to schedule reports for GSC and GA4. We can do the same using the Ahrefs Google Looker Studio Connectors.
Ahrefs has three connectors for Looker Studio that help you create GLS dashboards in a couple of clicks. You can find them in the Partner Connectors list within GLS.
Here’s what they look like:
Let’s get started with keyword rank tracking.
One of the issues with sharing traditional rank tracking data with clients is the reports can be too overwhelming at a glance, making it hard for them to see what’s going on.
Our Rank Tracker connector creates a shareable, easy-to-understand scheduled report in a few clicks.
Here’s how you set it up.
Go to Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker
Click on the project that you want to create a dashboard for, then click on Looker Studio.
Then click on Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker connector.
Authorize the connector
Once you’ve done that, you’ll be taken to Google Looker Studio to authorize the connector.
Click on Authorize and sign in using your Google account. You’ll need to click Allow for Ahrefs Rank Tracker to access your Google Account.
Once you’ve done that, enter the project you want to add and then hit Connect in the top right-hand corner. When you’re happy with everything, click Create Report.
Then, you should get a dashboard that looks something like this.
Schedule it
To make it automated, follow the same steps we used for our GSC and GA4 reports by clicking the downwards facing caret next to Share and click Schedule delivery.
Add the recipients to the report and select how regularly you want it sent.
Now you’ve set up the Rank Tracker report, you’ll be able to check these details in every email:
- Positions
- SERP features
- Competitors
- Tags
- Traffic share
- Keywords metrics
If you’re focusing on technical SEO on your website then it’s a good idea to get an automated Site Audit dashboard set up. It lets you keep track of your website’s technical health easily.
Go to Ahrefs’ Site Audit
Go to Ahrefs’ Site Audit and select a project from the dashboard to click on it.
Then click on the Looker Studio button in the top right-hand corner.
On the dropdown, click Ahrefs Site Audit connector.
Authorize the connector
Like other connectors, you may be prompted to Authorize and sign in using your Google account. You’ll need to click Allow for Ahrefs Rank Tracker to access your Google Account.
Afterward, set your parameters. I normally set it up like this.
If prompted, click on allow parameter sharing and then Create Report.
Then click Create Report again when prompted.
GLS then starts to build your report in the background.
Schedule it
You can schedule the reports in exactly the same way as you did with the other connectors. Click on Share and Schedule delivery to share with the people you want to receive the report.
You can use the Site Explorer report for monitoring your own site, but you can also use it to monitor your competitors’ sites.
Sidenote.
You must have your competitor’s website set up as a project in order to create a dashboard for it.
This dashboard report makes it possible to keep tabs on your competitors, and have it sent to your or your client’s inbox on a regular basis.
Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
Once on the Overview page, click the Looker Studio button in the top right-hand corner.
Then click on Ahrefs’ Site Explorer Connector.
Authorize the connector
Once you’ve done that, hit Authorize.
And sign in with Google.
Then, select a project and check all the boxes to ensure compatibility with the template.
Once you’ve done that, hit Connect, and if prompted, select Allow. Then click Create Report on the following screen.
Once you’ve created your report, it will appear on the following screen, and all the data should be populated.
Schedule it
Scheduling delivery is the same as we have seen for the other reports.
Once you’ve shared it with your colleagues or clients, it will automatically be delivered to your inboxes on your chosen schedule.
If your website is prone to occasional downtime, a tool like Uptime Robot is an easy and free way to automate monitoring of your website’s status.
Once you’ve set it up, you can receive notifications through email, slack messages, SMS, or even a voice call—that way, you’ll be the first to know when your website goes down.
If you want to monitor certain pages on your website for changes, you can use a tool like Little Warden. The tool can monitor many different things, but I like to use it to monitor the robots.txt file for changes.
This type of monitoring is useful in enterprise SEO, where multiple teams have access to the website and can change things often without notifying the SEO team beforehand.
If tracking web mentions of your brand or a specific keyword is important, you can do this using Ahrefs Alerts.
To do so, head to Alerts on the main site navigation and click the Mentions tab.
Then click + Add alert and enter the details in the pop-up box of the mention you want to track.
Mention alerts are a useful way to report unbranded mentions of your brand or website. Once you are alerted of the mention you can contact the website to request a link.
Final thoughts
Automating your SEO reporting process isn’t always easy to do. But by using Ahrefs’ Google Looker Studio connectors, you can make it easier to automate your SEO reporting process—without sacrificing quality.
Even if you have no coding knowledge or experience in building SEO dashboards, you can have a plug-and-play set of automated SEO reports ready to go in just a few clicks.
Got more questions? Ping me on X
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